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Money guy says next MoH uses Unreal engine
For those unable to decipher perplexing acronyms, the game in question would be Medal of Honor: Airborne, EA's next and next-gen entry in the extremely popular kill the nazis genre. By ways of CNN's Game Over column, analyst P.J. McNealy has asserted that 2007's Medal of Honor would be the first game to benefit from EA's adoption of Unreal Engine 3, with an unannounced title, Dead Space, to follow after. The latter game is likely not based on the office block that developed Rise of the Imperfects.The rest of the column ponders the fate of RenderWare, the widely used middleware engine that EA obtained along with their purchase of Criterion just over two years ago. Apart from the obvious benefit of having Burnout in the stable, EA initially stated that they intended to use an updated version of the engine for next-gen products, none of which have so far managed to materialize (Burnout Revenge for the Xbox 360 was mostly a port, after all). While it's conceivable that RenderWare has since been surpassed by Epic's technology, Mark Rein gives a far more reasonable explanation (yes, really) in an interview with FiringSquad.He suggests that "it comes down to smart resource management" and that EA is merely picking the best engine for the job. Unreal Engine 3 would presumably save them time and money for specific games and could be used in conjunction with their in-house tools. Apparently, you can never have too many engines at your disposal. Perhaps a good question to ask would be: how important is the graphics engine to you? Are you more likely to play a game knowing that it uses Source or Unreal, or is the visual end result the only thing that matters (besides that gameplay thing)?Read - EA's Engine Acquisition examinedRead - Mark Rein on EA's adoption of Unreal
EA gobbles up the rest of Battlefield developer DICE
According to GamesIndustry.biz, "DICE's board of directors has unanimously agreed on a joint merger plan" with Battlefield publisher EA.If all goes well, Digital Illusions CE will become fully owned by the largest 3rd-party publisher in the world when stockholders meet and vote on the measure May 24th. EA already owns two-thirds of the company's shares.Like any large company, EA has bought smaller competitors like Criterion and important industry players like Jamdat to buy its way into new markets and franchises, so this is nothing new. We simply wish DICE the best in the future (with hopefully few future layoffs because of this deal).
HDTV Game of the Week: Black
It's old -school week here at HD Beat, with no Xbox 360 titles debuting we'll take it back to EDTV with a new release for Xbox and PS2, Criterion's Black. This is a shooter in the purest sense of the word. Don't worry about the story, complex enemy AI or online multiplayer here, just blow stuff up. And when it looks this good that is not a bad thing at all.
BLACK not coming to the 360 but BLACK 2 is!
Alright, some bad news leavened with some good news: If you had any hopes of playing BLACK, EA's new gun-crazed FPS, on the 360, developer Criterion's Alex Ward has a message for you. He told Eurogamer, "I keep reading all over forums that we're going to make a 360 version of BLACK, and it's just not true... The only time you'll see [the BLACK franchise] on the Xbox 360 is when we make BLACK 2 on it in a few years." Apparently the speculation arose from BLACK's incompatibility with the 360, though Ward explained this had nothing to do with developers or publishers, and everything to do with Microsoft. He said, "[Microsoft] controls and decides what games its emulator works with. I've actually asked them four times myself for them to make it happen, but it's really not up to us... The fact that BLACK doesn't work on the 360 isn't us trying to make people wait for a 360 version... because that's not going to happen." This is consistent with what Microsoft has told us in the past though gaming conspiracy theorists refuse to accept it: games aren't being specifically kept from 360 compatibility for the sake of selling updated, next-gen variants. To quote, "Q: Are you intentionally trying to keep (game X) off the list because you want us to buy the 360 version? A: Nope. The team is probably working on (game X) right now, even as you read this post." See that? They're probably working on game X BLACK right now, as you're reading this post. Right guys? Guys? See also: Rumors squashed! MS debunks top 10 360 rumors Xbox team talks backwards compatability UPDATE: Mr. Ward has put up a conspiracy-theory smackdown post at the GAF forums, beginning, "Jesus, you guys are seriously paranoid! This is just an effort to set the record straight. So many of you are attacking us, as developers, for being deficient in some way regarding backward compatibility. It is simply out of our hands." He sounds serious! Let's hope MS keeps plugging away at the back-compat system, or Alex Ward is gonna have a lot more theories to dispel. [Via Xboxic]
